Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (6 page)

By this time Richmond's three platoons were deployed abreast, with his light and medium tanks as well as TDs in support. Describing the action, he remembered:

Yelling and screaming, the company attacked. Everybody in three pillboxes and their surrounding entrenchments surrendered…. With their great concentration of firepower from tanks, TDs, antitank guns and small arms, [Company I] had overwhelmed a section of the line, cleaned out the pillboxes that confronted them and had reached unfortified areas in back of the line. They knocked out pillboxes, they rushed a tank with a pole charge and knocked it out, and they suffered some casualties from mortar and artillery fire, but hardly any from the defenders in the line itself. Approaching through woods, it had been possible to come very close to the fortifications before the defenders could place effective fire on the Americans. After getting so close, when all the weapons in the reinforced company opened up, the Germans were unable to withstand the intensity of the assault and the defenses crumbled and fortifications fell.
³⁸

With a squad on point 300 yards to Captain Richmond's flank, Capt. Robert R. Cuther's Company L advanced to the Eupen road. Here, the Germans counterattacked with small arms and three 88mm guns. Cuther deployed a platoon southward toward another area of dragon's teeth while a second of his platoons pushed up the road, only to be stopped. Two TDs came up to hit the 88mm gun emplacements while a
third Company L platoon tried to work its way to the left along the edge of a wooded area to flank the enemy positions. Three German trucks, one antitank gun, and two pillboxes were knocked out. Right after this, Company K, under the command of Capt. Everett L. Booth, also moved eastward up the Eupen Road, following Cuther's men. The attack by Col. Frederick Gibb's 16th Infantry Regiment that day also included Lt. Col. Herbert C. Hicks's 2nd Battalion, which first turned right toward Eynatten before moving northeast along the main road to Brand.

The Maastricht bridgehead was also penetrated on 13 September. M4 Shermans and M5 Stuarts of the 743rd Tank Battalion stood before the city after first light, permitting the 30th Infantry Division's 117th Infantry Regiment, commanded by Col. Walter M. Johnson, to move up to its outskirts during the afternoon. Maastricht fell that night when an attack by two battalions of the 117th from the south flattened the bridgehead while fifteen tanks infiltrated into the city. “The enemy penetrated into Wijk, the eastern part of Maastricht,” the 275th Infantry Division's
Generalleutnant
Schmidt noted. “Our forces committed there were fully annihilated, put to rout or taken prisoner. The Meuse bridges had to be blown up in order to cover the rear of the occupational troops in the bridgehead, who withdrew to the north.”
³⁹

Seventh Army's evaluation of the situation during the evening of 13 September was understandably “worded very pessimistically.”
⁴⁰
The 116th Panzer Division's historian now noted, “The only glimmer of hope seemed to be the 12th Infantry Division, due to arrive by train. If the enemy were to attack on the whole [LXXXI] corps front, then the encirclement of Aachen was hardly avoidable.”

“Hold the Westwall or go down with the Westwall.”

ADOLF HITLER, FÜHRER HEADQUARTERS, 14 SEPTEMBER

A
fter Maastricht fell, a narrow corridor between the Vaart Canal and the Meuse River remained in enemy hands. Since this extended eastward halfway across the XIX Corps’ front to the north of Aachen, the area had to be cleared out before Maj. Gen. Ernest N. Harmon's 2nd Armored Division could spearhead the corps’ advance beyond the Meuse toward the German border. This mission was given to Lt. Col. William M. Stokes Jr., a peacetime insurance and investment advisor now commanding the North Force of Col. John H. Collier's Combat Command A (CCA).

Task Force Stokes was comprised of the Headquarters Company and the 3rd Battalion of his own 66th Armored Regiment—the oldest armored unit in the Army, the 65th Field Artillery Battalion, a company of the 48th Medical Battalion and two platoons of the 17th Armored Engineer Battalion. To further assist Stokes with his assignment, he was also given the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion and the 99th Infantry Battalion, the latter a Norwegian-American unit under the command of Maj. Harold D. Hansen. This combined force cleared the critical corridor between 16 and 18 September, causing 918 enemy casualties while suffering just 93 losses.
¹

Major General Hobbs's 30th Infantry Division, nicknamed “Old Hickory” for its Tennessee roots, crossed the German border on 19
September. The main body of Colonel Johnson's 117th Infantry Regiment contacted the
Westwall
across from the small village of Palenberg.
²
Lt. Col. Robert E. Frankland's 1st Battalion, departing earlier that day from a grateful and liberated Dutch citizenry in Heerlen, Holland, reached the vicinity of Scherpenseel, which in contrast looked like a deserted town because just a handful of German citizens remained in their homes. Frankland's Company B, commanded by combat-wise Capt. Robert C. Spiker, was the first unit to cross the Reich border.
³
Here the
Westwall
pillboxes stared out from Scherpenseel along the southeast and northeast sides of the village while more obstacles loomed just across the Wurm River, approximately 1,500 yards to the east.
⁴
The 1st Battalion of Col. Edwin M. Sutherland's 119th Infantry Regiment consolidated its positions approximately 200 yards east of Groenstraat, Holland. German prisoners captured by American patrols reported that the strongest enemy defenses were in the vicinity of the town of Rimburg and the nearby medieval Rimburg Castle. The main structure was originally built in the twelfth century from scattered Roman-era millstone and had more recently been owned by Gen. Walter von Brauchitsch, chief of the German High Command, until December 1941. The castle, surrounded by a moat, was located between the spring water–fed Wurm River and the Aachen-Geilenkirchen railroad line on the German side of the border. From this commanding location Old Hickory's opposite numbers had perfect observation up and down the Wurm River Valley.
⁵

Palenberg and the nearby picturesque village of Ubach were situated on the left wing of the newly arrived 183rd
Volksgrenadier
Division, under the command of
Generalleutnant
Wolfgang Lange. This division, like many other
Volksgrenadier
divisions, was composed of remnants from other staffs at an officer level, including Lange's headquarters staff which came from the former Corps Detachment C.
⁶
Its activation was completed during the first half of September at the Doellersheim troop training ground in Lower Austria; 51 percent of the division's personnel were from the Lower Danube and Vienna. Many of the enlisted men had been deferred for years; a large percentage were from Alsace-Lorraine, East Upper Silesia, western Prussia, and the Warta district. The 183rd
Volksgrenadier
Division would join elements from the 176th Replacement Training Division, which was comprised of convalescent soldiers of
every conceivable age who were equipped with just a few heavy infantry weapons.
⁷

In mid-September the 183rd
Volksgrenadier
Division was transported without incident to the Western front where various units took up positions along the 16-kilometer line from Palenberg-Ubach northward to both sides of culturally rich Geilenkirchen. At the same time the 30th Infantry Division arrived on the Reich border, the withdrawing units of
Generalleutnant
Schmidt's 275th Division came under Lange's command here. Elements of the 49th Infantry Division were also added to the
Westwall
south of Rimburg. Lange remembered, “Since the withdrawing divisions were exhausted and our situation and that of the enemy were rather uncertain, the 183rd was obliged to carry out many thorough reconnaissance missions.”
⁸

General Corlett's XIX Corps plans were to push through the
Westwall
on 20 September, just one day after the 30th Infantry Division arrived on the Reich border, but air support was unavailable because of overcast skies and rainy weather. Since crossing the Meuse River above Liege, a 15-mile zone of operations had evolved across Corlett's front, which extended from the woods west of Geilenkirchen, opposite the 183rd
Volksgrenadier
Division, then southward along the high ground roughly parallel and to the west of the railroad line that ran all the way down into Aachen.
⁹
This exposure, along with the same shortage of supplies and artillery ammunition that affected Collins's VII Corps, led Corlett to make the decision to postpone striking at the
Westwall
until better weather and elements of the 29th Infantry Division could be brought up from Brest.
¹⁰
Corlett not only believed that strength in unit depth was needed to exploit breaching the
Westwall
, but also knew clearer skies were required for air support.

The weather did not cooperate over the next several days, nor did the expected regiment of the 29th Infantry Division arrive from Brest until 29 September. As a result, any assistance to help relieve the pressure brought to bear on the American units south of Aachen when the 12th Infantry Division arrived would now wait until early October.

Oberst
Engel's move to reinforce the hard-pressed German units defending the tangled dense woods south of Aachen and in the Stolberg
Corridor had remained undetected because of the same bad weather that plagued the XIX Corps zone. As he remembered:

The whole division was fortunate enough to reach the operational area. The 1st Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment, unloaded at Julich in the morning on 16 September, and the 3rd Battalion, unloaded at Duren, were packed all at once on vehicles.

In the meantime, news reached the division that Kornelimunster, Vicht, Mausbach, Gressenich and the southern part of Stolberg were lost. Enemy reconnaissance forces were said to have entered Atsch. East of Aachen, the Verlautenheide ridge was lost. Quick action was required. There was danger that Aachen could be outflanked from the south and southeast, and the danger of a breakthrough via Julich and Duren to the Rhine.
¹¹

As it was with the city of Aachen, VII Corps did not intend to attack the mixed-industrial town of Stolberg after breaching the second line of the
Westwall
—the Schill Line. General Rose's plan of operations on 14 September—two days ahead of the 12th Infantry Division's arrival—was for Brigadier General Hickey's CCA to attack toward the west side of Stolberg, and for Colonel Boudinot's CCB to bypass the town to the east. Rose still intended to ignore Stolberg altogether and instead advance directly for the VII Corps objective—Eschweiler—and the eventual linkup with XIX Corps.
¹²

Major Mills began his attack at 0900 that morning by first sending Captain Vaughn's Company I through the woods to flank stubborn Schmidthof from the east while Capt. Richard M. Getter's Company H swung down the draw fronting the village and attacked from there. A particularly heavy artillery preparation preceded this attack, helping Getter's men seize the village before noontime with surprisingly little difficulty. Most of the pillboxes that had held up the attack the night before were now empty, and those few that were manned by young boys and old men surrendered.
¹³

By 1000 hours it was finally safe to start working on the nearby dragon's teeth. The crater that had held up progress the day before was
soon being filled; the engineers removed the I-beams and blew the gate crossing the road. But not all went quite as smoothly. They encountered some difficulty filling the crater with dirt since it had already filled with water, so the engineers built a bypass to speed things up. A few of the lead tanks and half-tracks were able to use this makeshift arrangement while the engineers continued working on filling the crater so the full roadway could be opened up.

During this time, Vaughn's Company I was following trails through the woods roughly parallel to the roadway northward. With Schmidthof secured, Vaughn was ordered to reconnoiter the next stream-crossing point, where he found the bridge out just south of Friesenrath, a small historic village 11 kilometers southeast of Aachen. The two platoons with him moved forward to hold the area for the engineers, who soon came up and started their work. At approximately 1500, while the bridge was still under construction, Major Mills sent infantry patrols yet another thousand yards northward to reconnoiter. They had discovered a shallow ford that permitted a platoon of medium tanks from Company F to cross the stream. By this time the main body of the column was slowly uncoiling. Shortly after 1715 hours when, according to reports, “the Corps, Division and Combat Command arrived,”
¹⁴
Task Force Mills was well on its way northward, escorted by 105mm field artillery volleys. The armor nevertheless still proceeded cautiously as they started coming abreast of Task Force Lovelady.

Prudence was justified. Minutes later, a large gun was spotted as the column rolled forward; enemy infantry were also seen ducking into a group of nearby hedges. By now it was nearing 1800 and Mills, convinced a considerable number of enemy strongpoints lay farther ahead, ordered his tanks to pull off the road. They soon discovered a blown railroad viaduct close by, its rubble and debris completely blocking the road. This prompted Mills to pull up in his tank to the brow of a hill overlooking Itternberg, and when the tank turned onto a dirt road, two German air corps officers, immaculately dressed, suddenly came out of a farmhouse and surrendered.
¹⁵

Soon after this, a report came in from the commander of Company F indicating that as his tanks had maneuvered into position farther up the roadway they had run into a whole group of dual-purpose 88mm antitank and antiaircraft guns. At about the same time, Captain Vaughn
also reported that he had sighted more enemy infantry in and around the hedges off the roadway. After Mills came up and saw this for himself, he ordered Vaughn to deploy his men on both sides of the road and move into the nearby fields to clean them out. In the process, they discovered:

At least eight of the dual purpose guns, in addition to a towed 105 rife, were located in the hedges and fields of this hill. The weapons were brand new, and about the positions were stacked large quantities of ammunition. The guns were so placed as to cover completely the road on which the column had just moved. If the enemy had so desired he could have wiped out the entire company of tanks and inflicted heavy casualties on the infantry in its halftracks. In short time 75 prisoners were rounded up, and during the next few hours some 25 more were located.
¹⁶

Mills credited the heavy artillery preparation just before he moved into the area with preventing what could have been a disaster for his tanks and infantry. The 67th Groupment, Armored Field Artillery after-action report for 14 September recorded what had actually happened:

Lieutenant Colonel Berry had established observation well forward in a three-story house and was able to accurately locate CCB's elements on our right and enemy activity in the same area. There was no air cover, but our liaison plane was able to operate unmolested by enemy aircraft or ack-ack. Radio communication had failed frequently due to poor tubes. Used tubes were being reissued for use in our frequency modulated transmitters.
¹⁷

Since it was too late by this time to move farther ahead, Mills made preparations to halt the column for the night. Companies H and I secured the high ground beyond the bridge; Captain Getter reported at 2100 that the area was cleared. Meanwhile, six tanks forded the stream in a shallow spot just to the west of the fallen bridge, and their crews were used to form roadblocks right in Kornelimunster. Infantry patrols even worked ahead in a northeasterly direction toward Breinigerheide, where it was also reported that the area was clear.

Back during the midmorning hours, the advance guard for Task Force Lovelady had been ordered to side-step to the west and strike what at that time was the uncertain enemy strength beyond Schmidthof. Accordingly, Company D's medium tanks, Amborst's infantrymen, and the 1st Platoon of the reconnaissance company started working their way through stone quarries toward Hahn where they found another blown bridge in the middle of the village, but again no enemy resistance.
¹⁸